Mastery in Eternal Recurrence

Abstract

Every effort to find in the core of the human being something that could function, epistemologically, as the original identity-pole, the original unity term, presupposed by every act of comprchension, that is, every act of unifying the diversity of experience, or that could figure, metaphysically, as a substance, a self-subsisting entity, or that could be conceived, existentially, as a destiny, the unitary plot of the temporal phases of a life, is radically undermined by Nietzsche’s supposition that identities, enduring things, things that are the same, are but logical constructs, correlates of the logical, anthropological, will to power. The ego, he says, is a grammatical fiction.¹ The logic of identities has only the value of a system of simplifications, of falsifications, which has functioned to enable this human species to survive. But — man is no argument.² The very concepts of identity, of essence, of underlying unity, of causal source could not then be used to conceive of the sovereign and master form of life Nietzsche’s thought is wholly devoted to announcing.